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Am I going to kill you because I do not like what you draw or conversely, Am I going to get killed because you don’t like what I draw? In the past few days, following the Paris massacre, there have been animated discussions on these issues along with fierce debates on whether the right to free speech and expression can be absolute ( as is the case in France) or subject to limitations, as in India. Trying to make sense of the compelling arguments by both sides, I have hesitated to arrive at any conclusion. Defending the right to offend through a visual depiction vis a vis ‘free expression’ circumscribed by the sensibilities of different religious beliefs; that’s a tricky one.
In all the hullabaloo and finger-pointing at Islam and its fanatics, I was mulling over the thought that had the late painter MF Hussain, who was in the line of fire of Hindu fundamentalists for his depiction of Hindu goddesses, exiled. Had he stayed on in India despite the threats, would he have survived? I had accidentally bumped into the tall, lean artist as he walked around barefoot at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi, carrying his trademark gigantic paint brush. During his last days in exile, he had expressed his longing to return to India, a wish that remained unfulfilled.
Of the several artists, graphic novelists and graphic designers who are my friends, I have not always agreed with their depictions, but just because a particular drawing was not to my liking or taste, would that qualify me to censor them? I’m not so sure.
There are instances in history aplenty of people being persecuted and even killed for their speeches, their writing, their beliefs which were in opposition to organized religion, but the coldblooded shooting of cartoonists or artists for their drawings has been rare. Maybe the Danish cartoonist from the newspaper Jyllands-Posten was just lucky that the police found out about the murder plot (in 2008) before they got to him; the Parisian group of cartoonists wasn’t.
A cartoonist friend with a leading English news daily explained to me the other day his shock and horror at the Paris killings. “What the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were doing was in a way passive resistance,” he said. “Their form of protest was passive resistance. They were not violent. Do you kill people for that?”
If a cartoon on religion is taboo in India, political icons who attain godly status too are beyond the realm of caricature. So it was no surprise that cartoons of BR Ambedkar sketched decades ago by cartoonist Shankar and had found a place in NCERT text books was suddenly found ‘blasphemous’ by a certain political party. The politics that was played out in Parliament ensured that the cartoons were removed from the books.
With the public outcry that the incident has given rise to, the oft-quoted saying may have to be rephrased as ‘(The) pen and paintbrush are mightier than the sword.’ But when the dust settles, will the multitudes who are now rising up in defense of free expression continue to walk the talk?
